Were unit wage costs to rise too far, they could recover competitiveness more quickly.
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In terms of relative unit wage costs, Germany's competitiveness has improved by around 13% since the euro started.
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Part of this rise in pay has been offset by strong productivity growth, but even unit wage costs are rising more rapidly.
The worry that euro-zone countries such as Spain may suffer prolonged slumps because they lost control of unit wage costs lends the inflation test some weight, though not much.
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Though average wages at Fiat's plant are only around 60% of those at Ford's, the company claims that when the social and medical benefits that it provides are included, the gap in unit wage costs is not huge.
Between 2001 and 2010 Italy's unit-wage costs soared and its economy grew by less than any other country in the world, except Haiti and Zimbabwe.
Falling productivity pushes up unit-wage costs, hurting profits and cashflow.
But if productivity growth suddenly increases, workers are initially happy with the previous pace of real wage gains, so unit labour costs decline, allowing both unemployment and inflation to fall.
What really matters for jobs and competitiveness is not consumer price inflation, but the rate of change of unit labor costs. (Unit labor costs are wage rates adjusted for changes in productivity.) A recent study from the Boston Consulting Group suggests that Chinese unit labor costs will grow at about 8.5 percent per year over the next five years.
The relationship is strong enough, Ms Van Rijckeghem and Ms Weder reckon, to suggest that raising average civil-service pay from 100% to 200% of the manufacturing wage reduces corruption by about one unit in the corruption index.
Wages were thus deliberately repressed: there were some real wage cuts but the majority of that cut in unit labour costs came from the normal ongoing rise in productivity.
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